The night before, I looked at previous Pro Tour results and saw that in all likelihood, a 4-3 record for the day would put me in the Top 64 and in the money and 5-2 would get me Top 32. Of course I would love to go 7-0 or 6-0-1 and make Top 8, but I was hoping for at least 4-3 if not 5-2.

---------DRAFT #3:---------I looked at the draft pods and saw that I was in the same pod as Eugene Harvey

, whom I met briefly at Worlds and got to know a lot better through rooming with him for GP Montreal. He’s given me lots of fantastic advice since then and I REALLY hoped we don’t have to play each other, as not only do I consider him a friend but also view him as one of the best players.

My picks in the draft went as follows:1. Patriarch’s DesireThis was looking just like draft #2. I did have the choice of a Resilient Wanderer

, and I was really tempted to take the Wanderer, but I felt that passing the Flock would risk sending a somewhat bad signal, as the pack was pretty weak apart from that and the Desire. 2. Ghastly Demise

. I’m still not sure what the best choice was, but given the probably lack of other people playing White, I felt the Sacrament could really dominate, especially as it was early enough that I could draft a bit more White weenies than usual.17. Dirty Wererat

This was interesting. One of the better cards in the set offered as a 3rd pick was too tempting to pass up. I was figuring that I could possibly splash it, or switch into U and splash W if the W dried up too much.19. Gravedigger

, with 4 outstanding cards. The only thing I think I might have been better off doing was going into W earlier in the draft as it might have led to my getting better W in pack 2, but I still got decent W and got some good B cards in my first few picks.

NOTES AND WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY?:----------------------------------------------The deck had plenty of creatures, with 15 in total, 9 of which were W. The 10 4+ casting cost creatures combined with the color requirements convinced me to go with 18 lands.

The possible things I felt I could have done differently was to play the Mystic Visionary

. The Archer is great against removal-light decks but isn’t as good vs. other decks. I was worried about including the Visionary and having too many weenies in the event I didn’t draw the Sacrament and I felt that I didn’t have enough ways of gaining threshold and too many cards that needed it to include the Assassin. I think the 22nd card was probably a tossup in the end.

I felt I could probably at least 3-1 with this deck, between the Divine Sacrament

playing UW. Here I had to play Eugene in the first round of the draft! :( However, to make matters even worse, Eugene got a match loss for a deck registration error, so we didn’t even play a real match. I felt REALLY bad for him as it sucks to lose that way. However, to Eugene’s great credit, his response was that if he had to get a match loss, he was glad it was to a friend. That’s just the kind of guy Eugene is. :)5-2-1

Round 9: LOST, vs. Thomas Gundersen playing BG. Game 1 I lost when he got Chainer going along with casting Morbid Hunger

Round 10: WON, vs. Masanari Kaneko playing BG. This was the 4th BG deck I played – it seemed to be quite a popular archetype! Anyway, this match was being covered for the Japanese Sideboard, so that was pretty cool. Game 1 Masanari got out Narcissism

) and returning my Stalked creature to play :) I think I may have also been left with a Teroh’s Faithful. I was then able to win as I had saved up some creatures and he was out of gas. Game 2 he demolished me with 2 Roar of the Wurm

got him back the cards he had mulliganed away. Afterwards I wondered if I should have mulliganed my hands, but I could cast most of the cards in my starting hand – it just happened that both games I kept drawing B cards but no B mana for a long time.6-4-1

Oh well, only a 2-2 instead of a 3-1, but I could still make Top 32 with a 3-0 performance in the last draft, and 2-1 should get me Top 64. And now for the final draft in the final part of my report . . .

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